FOUR men were yesterday cleared of raping a young Welsh holidaymaker on a Spanish holiday island after judges ruled she "willingly" had sex with them.

The 22-year-old, from Rhondda, claimed she was gang-raped by three of the men in a warehouse after being grabbed from the entrance to a nightclub, tied up and blindfolded.

But in a written judgment released yesterday, three judges ruled that evidence given by the woman during the trial "did not sound convincing and believable, nor convey the truth, nor was it logical or coherent".

The statement also alleged that the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, may have made the claims in an attempt to acquire a compensation payout from her holiday insurance.

The alleged incident took place in May 2005 at the upmarket resort of Puerto Pollensa on the north coast of Majorca.

The trial, at the island's Palace of Justice, heard that the woman had been drinking with a group of friends before going to a nightclub in the port area of the resort.

They stayed at the club until the early hours of the morning, when the majority of the group left, leaving the alleged victim with one of her friends.

Around 4am, the woman told the court, she was grabbed from behind and overpowered. She claimed she was then blindfolded and tied up, including having her mouth gagged, and dragged to a nearby warehouse where she was raped. But the judges claimed that her evidence was not believable, and ruled that the four Spanish men who had been on trial for a charge of sexual aggression had been telling the truth when they claimed to have had consensual sex with the woman.

Under Spanish law, the offence of sexual aggression is used to cover all forms of sexual assault including full rape.

Two of the defendants claimed that she had willingly had sex with a series of men in the doorway of the club.

The two men, who worked as doormen in other discos in the area, said she had invited them to have sex with her.

In their verdict, the judges wrote that they believed the claims of the defendants, all aged between 18 and 29, that the woman had performed sex acts on each of them in the presence of several witnesses.

At the time of the offence, the woman's family said she had been left distraught by the alleged incident and had required two days of hospital treatment before returning to Wales.

"She has had an awful time and just wants to be home to recover," her brother told reporters two years ago.

"She's in no position to talk to anybody about this. It will take her some time to get over this ordeal."

The upmarket tourist destination in the Balearics was voted the world's best holiday destination in 2001 by readers of the Sunday Times.

It lies roughly an hour's travel to the north of Palma, the island's capital.